Moorings, these days, can be difficult to find. On some of the most popular canals you can go past perhaps a mile of tethered craft before you can find a space. If you’re leaving your boat to go ashore, lock up firmly. It is rare to be burgled; though our boat was once broken into, for, curiously, a packet of muesli and some corduroy trousers. It turned out that the perpetrator was in fact known locally: he made a practice of stealing from moored boats during the summer months, but, as the weather grew more unkind he would arrange to be apprehended, and spend the winter as a guest of Her Majesty. Then he’d come out and start all over again.
Rocketing housing costs, particularly in London, mean that people are flocking to live in narrowboats and one can see the resulting congestion for oneself, as here on Regent’s Canal.
© Getty
More and more people, especially in cities, are buying a second-hand narrowboat to live on, at perhaps a tenth of the price they’d be asked to pay for a one-room flat. But that’s only the start of it: there’s a licence and insurance; and mooring fees can sometimes be really expensive in a marina or secure boatyard. If you can find a space along the towpath to moor up, that’s all right for a fortnight, and then you’ll have to move on somewhere else; that’s the law.
Do we live on our boat for any length of time? we’re asked. Yes, often, when there is a canal with a secure mooring near the theatre at which we’re playing. It’s a home. We’ve lived aboard in Bristol, in Bath many times, and in Leeds for a while. Sam borrowed the boat for two seasons in Stratford-on-Avon.
Pru regards the boat as a second home; the only thing she really misses is the garden. Pru is a very keen gardener. We have a lovely garden at home, and when she’s away she likes me to attend to it, and report on progress. I’m a novice. This is a letter I wrote to her in 1968:
The Garden. Ah, well now. Umm. Yes. Yes. Right you are. Well, here goes then. RIGHT. From the beginning. First things first. My general impression is that there are more leaves than flowers. Just so. Quite a lot more, in fact. The next thing that strikes the intelligent observer is that what flowers there are, are to be found on the left, as you look out of the window. None on the right. No. What are these flowers, you will wish to ask? Well, they are mostly those pink ones, you know, several to a stem, also available in blue. And white too. Oh, and purple. Or are those different? Anyway, there are about ten in all.
Now I don’t want to stick my neck out here, but I believe I may be right in saying there are some daffodils on the same side of the garden, and one thing I’m pretty sure of is that there were a lot more of them at this time last year. At the end of the garden we seem to have a lot of tall green stuff with small yellow bits on top. A considerable amount. Probably more than anyone else in the road.
Well, that’s about it. Yes, I believe that just about wraps it up. Anything else you want to know about the garden, you know you have only to ask.
Some people like to create gardens on the tops of their boats. If you’re living aboard permanently and not moving, that’s fine, but, if I had to steer while trying to peer between hollyhocks and sunflowers, I think I might bang into things. (I do bang into things sometimes, and not always by accident: Channel 4 rather like me to have a bump from time to time.)
An early precursor to Great Canal Journeys.
We were beginning to be recognised on the canal circuit, and I was approached by Carlton Television in Birmingham to introduce a series of weekly half-hour programmes about canals and their history, entitled Waterworld, dealing mainly, but not solely, with the West Midlands. It was put together, produced and directed by the admirable Keith Wootton, and there was some splendid footage and lovely archive photography. All I had to do was a short piece to camera to introduce each episode. We did it for nine years, and it was very popular in the Midlands. We were preparing for a tenth year when Carlton told us that, due to cuts, locally shown programmes had become uneconomical. So why not show them nationally, on the network? we asked. Ah, no, they explained; you see, there are lots of areas in the UK that just don’t have canals. We said, well there are lots of areas in the UK that don’t have volcanoes, or glaciers, or rainforests, but they make pretty good television. But, no, they wouldn’t budge.
I don’t exactly know how Great Canal Journeys came about. Perhaps someone at Channel 4 had seen Waterworld and thought it was a good topic that could be expanded. Or did the idea come fresh from the independent company Spun Gold Television, and did they pitch it to the Channel? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. Spun Gold are a pleasure to work for, and C4 are immensely supportive.
The unit that we work with is very small: there is Mike Taylor, who is in overall charge, functioning as producer, director and screenwriter; James Clarke was our senior cameraman on all the early episodes, with Gary Parkhurst on second camera; Sam Matthewson did the sound, and we had different production assistants and a different runner for each shoot. As time went on, the wonderful Catriona (‘Trina’) Lear joined us as PA, researcher, caterer, wardrobe mistress and line producer, and Pru and I made up the small, happy and efficient family. In the last couple of years we were joined by my darling daughter Juliet, who, after her mother and I parted, came to live with Pru and me, and eventually occupied our basement flat. Juliet is a professional hairdresser, and, as our unit wasn’t grand enough to boast a dresser or a makeup artist, Pru fell on her neck sobbing with gratitude.
Whilst Pru and I are front and centre of the show, none of it would be possible without our fabulous – and very patient – crew.
Making a programme that is meant to look spontaneous and impromptu does of course take quite a lot of planning. Preproduction work starts with selecting a location, somewhere that we, and we hope the audience, will be excited by. What will the weather be like? Might there be any political problems leading to restricted access? Where exactly should we go? What should we see? Whom might we talk to about the history of the place, and of the canal or river? What is there of literary, artistic or musical interest? And so on. Also, we have to charter a boat.
When we feel we have enough potential ingredients to make a good programme, a route has to be planned that if possible can include it all within a six- or seven-day shoot. Mike, with Trina and the leading cameraman, will first of all go out there on reconnaissance to plan how to make it all possible and think how to capture it scenically.
Meanwhile, Pru and I will do a bit of reading: is there a local writer, a poet or dramatist that we should be able to quote; any local legends we should know about? Latterly, we have had the services of a researcher to do a lot of the groundwork, and they have often come up with some quite surprising things.
Something we had to decide upon, before we started making the series, was how open we should be about a condition in darling Pru that had been diagnosed as vascular dementia. In appearance, this is very similar to Alzheimer’s disease, but develops more slowly (at least it has in her case).
It must have been at least twenty years ago that I came to see Pru in a play she was doing at Greenwich, and I thought, There’s something wrong here. It wasn’t that she was uncertain about her lines – she obviously knew them perfectly well – but there was just this sensation that she had to think for a millisecond before she spoke.
Now that’s not how Pru works: throw her the ball, and she’s caught it and thrown it back to you in a trice. So after the show I just asked her if she was feeling OK, and she said yes, perfectly, thank you, what do you mean? I can’t remember how I persuaded her to go and see a specialist, who sent her